Here’s What to Wear to Score a First-Round Pick at the Sports Bar

Earlier this week, after spotting Olivia Munn in a retro ’60s mod Gucci miniskirt and knee-high leather boots and with Green Bay Packers beau Aaron Rodgers at her side, this fashion writer figured the actress most likely doesn’t subscribe to this new style phenomenon sweeping sports bars across the nation. As football season kicked off last fall, a colleague of mine noticed that a consortium of female sports fans (well, at least female aficionados of male sports fans) were queuing up in nothing more than bandage dresses and ski parkas on Sunday afternoons to scour the epicenter of male sports fanaticism. With the same energy and barely there wardrobe that Saturday night clubbing demands, single ladies looking to draft a new, unsuspecting first-round pick on their roster were ditching their jerseys for spandex.

It’s a strategy that gives a whole new meaning to the idea of fantasy football, a game that will go down in the dating Hall of Fame. Why not attend a locale littered with male prospects that are impassioned and fueled by nothing more than testosterone and Jameson? The odds are forever in your favor, but fumbling a game-day look could ultimately mess with your record. The NFL, after all, is entering into a day and age where its players are donning Versace jeans to attend games and attending the Met Gala in the off-season. These days, so-called jocks are as much fashion stars as they are Heisman Trophy winners. So the alternative approach? Leave the thirst to the bar patrons and take your look down a notch, pulling from the best sporty staples—varsity socks, logo crewneck sweatshirts—while still injecting plenty of appeal. As Vogue.com Market Editor Chelsea Zalopany explains, “The integration of such classic yet stereotypical sports elements acts as a sort of humorous element to your actual style, which is laid-back, smart, subtly sexy, and uniquely your own.”

A body-skimming Zimmermann striped swimsuit under a pair of Elder Statesman high-waisted flares, layered with an oversize and insouciantly cool Alpha Industries bomber jacket, gives a high-octane look a dose of needed chill. You’ll last plenty of rounds of beer pitchers in a combo of a retro Adidas Trefoil tee tucked into a pair of Vetements patchy jeans, and you’ll pick up the numbers of any number of first-round picks in a thigh-skimming Hanley miniskirt worn with an oversize Marc by Marc Jacobs vintage sweatshirt. But no matter the combo, you simply can’t lose.

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